Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy reintroduced legislation yesterday that would strengthen penalties -- and possibly require prison time -- for environmental crimes like those alleged in last year's Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

The Vermont Democrat's bill would apply to criminal violations of the Clean Water Act, directing the U.S. Sentencing Commission to review and amend sentencing guidelines. The proposal would also provide victims with access to compensation for their loss by making payment of restitution mandatory under the 1972 water pollution law. Current law holds that restitution is discretionary and only available under limited circumstances.

Leahy called both provisions "common-sense steps."

"These measures are tough but fair," he said in a statement. "They are important steps toward deterring criminal conduct that can cause environmental and economic disaster and toward helping those who have suffered so much from the wrongdoing of big oil and other large corporations."

Leahy also called for corporate environmental crimes to carry prison time as an essential deterrent.

"All too often corporations treat fines and monetary penalties as a mere cost of doing business to be factored against profits," he said. "To deter criminal behavior by corporations, it is important to have laws that result in prison time."

Leahy first introduced the bill last June. The legislation cleared the Judiciary Committee with the help of Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions (E&ENews PM, June 24), who was then the ranking member, but it never received a vote on the Senate floor.

"Corporations have to be treated fairly in a court of law, but they should be held to account," Sessions said last year, in lending support critical to its passage in committee.

Referring specifically to BP PLC, Sessions added: "They will pay what they owe and they are not too big to fail. If it takes everything that they have to pay what they owe, then that's what they should be prepared to do" (E&E Daily, June 18, 2010).